English

Abstract

Antibiotic producing actinomycetes can be identified from soil from different locations including various geographical locations. But antibiotic producing actinomycetes are yet to be identified from hospital wasteland soil or drainage soil. In this study, we have identified 11 actinomycetes isolate from five different hospital wasteland and drainage soil of West Bengal, India. Only 1 isolate out of 11 isolates is found to be antibiotic producer and this antibiotic is showing high level of antibacterial activity against both gram positive and gram negative microorganisms. The crude extract of the antibiotic is found to be more active against gram positive microorganisms whereas ethyl acetate fractionated antibiotics is showing almost two fold more activity than its crude counterpart against gram negative microorganisms. Ethyl acetate fractionated antibiotic is demonstrating more activies than standard antibiotic, chloramphenicol against all the test microorganisms. MIC of the antibiotic is estimated to be 18μg against Bacillus cereus. Ethyl acetate fractionated antibiotic shows a single band on TLC plate. Key wordsActinomycetes, Zone of inhibition, antimicrobial activity, wasteland soil, drainage soil. International Journal of Microbiology Research ISSN: 0975-5276 & E-ISSN: 0975-9174, Volume 4, Issue 6, 2012 Introduction Actinomycetes comprise an extensive and diverse group of Grampositive, aerobic, mycelial bacteria and play an important ecological role in soil cycle as they primarily inhabit the soil [1]. Actinomycetes have characteristic biological aspects such as mycelial forms of growth that accumulates in sporulation and the ability to form a wide variety of secondary metabolites including most of the antibiotics. They have provided many important bioactive compounds of high commercial value and continue to be routinely screened for new bioactive compounds. These searches have been remarkably successful and approximately two thirds of naturally occurring antibiotics, including many of medical importance, have been isolated from Actinomycetes [2]. Almost 80% of the world’s antibiotics are known to come from actinomycetes, mostly from the genera Streptomyces and Micromonospora [3]. It produces several antibiotics including of amino glycosides, anthracyclins, glycopeptides, b-lactams, macrolides, nucleosides, peptides, polyenes, polyethers and tetracycline [4]. According to the World Health Organization, over-usage and the improper and indiscriminate uses of antibiotics have led to the creation of antibiotic resistance in many bacterial pathogens. Nowadays, the drug resistant strains of pathogen emerge more quickly than the rate of discovery of new drugs and antibiotics. Rising numbers of antibiotic unresponsive infectious disease agents confront patients worldwide [5-6] and consensus has emerged that it is essential that novel antibiotic classes be developed as part of the strategy to control the emerging drug-resistant pathogens [7-9]. Therefore, there is a renewed interest in discovering novel classes of antibiotics that have different mechanisms of action [10-11]. The resistance problem necessitates the discovery of new antibacterial agents effective against pathogenic bacteria resistant to current antibiotics. Therefore, we need to isolate Citation: Shouvik Saha, Pranab Roy and Sutanu Samanta (2012) Actinomycetes from Hospital Dump Soil Produce Highly Active Antibiotic. International Journal of Microbiology Research, ISSN: 0975-5276 & E-ISSN: 0975-9174, Volume 4, Issue 6, pp.-258-262. Copyright: Copyright©2012 Shouvik Saha, Pranab Roy and Sutanu Samanta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.